After a brief stint at an early-stage proptech and climate tech VC, two years ago I decided to take the plunge and apply to the Kalaari Fellowship. I was excited by the opportunity to shift closer to the ecosystem and build depth in venture, grounded in real operating experience rather than theory.
The application process itself was extensive, spanning building an investment thesis from scratch, analysing real portfolio MIS data, writing detailed essays, and creating a content roadmap for the firm. It was rigorous by design, mirroring what the role truly demands. That process gave me a clear picture of what the next two years would involve.
Building Operator Side Experience: In the Trenches
My first real exposure to startups came during a year-long internship at an Augmented Reality edtech startup, where I joined as an Entrepreneur in Residence. The role was as broad as the title suggested. I was the third person in alongside the two founders, with my next paycheck tied to a planned fundraise. What followed was a crash course in zero-to-one execution. Working shoulder to shoulder with the founders, I spoke to 200+ K–12 educators to find early adopters, collected customer feedback, stress-tested TestFlight builds, worked on fundraising pitch decks, and learned marketing on the fly. Weekends were often spent in Berlin parks figuring things out, including where to find cheap groceries. By the end of the year, the app had broken into the Apple App Store’s Top 10 edtech apps in Germany, and outreach to Apple executives in Cupertino eventually led to a feature at the WWDC Developer Conference and our first pre-seed fundraise.
That experience pulled me firmly into the startup ecosystem. Drawn to the ownership, pace, and ambiguity of early-stage building, I spent the remainder of B-school scouting early-stage founders for the VC arm of Axel Springer and Porsche, then known as APX and now Heartfelt. It was my first exposure to venture and taught me the importance of strong relationships, prompt communication, and deep respect for founders as my primary source of learning across new sectors.
Post B-school, I went deeper into operating by joining Fraugster, a growth-stage payments and security startup, in a founder office role. I worked across core workstreams, supporting the Series B fundraise, shaping enterprise partnerships, and building a deeper understanding of the payments and security ecosystem. I gained exposure to how machine learning models and graph databases operate in production, what enterprise sales with leading payments clients looks like, and how product strategy is shaped by operators who had previously scaled teams at companies like PayPal and Klarna. Over nearly two years, I watched the company scale from roughly 50 to 180 people before a failed fundraise and declining volumes led to an acquisition. The experience was tough but invaluable, offering a compressed education in timing risk, capital structure fragility, and how quickly narratives can change, and reinforcing a clear pull toward venture grounded in operating reality.
Finding Kalaari and Learnings from the Fellowship
As the Fellowship comes to an end, what I take away most is clarity. What initially felt like distinct parts of venture, thesis building, sourcing, portfolio engagement, and network building, revealed itself as a compounding flywheel. Kalaari provided the platform to experience this through depth and immersion.
Direct engagement with operators, domain experts, and founders shaped conviction in ways desk research never could. Time spent at live construction sites while working on construction tech grounded my understanding of where software can create real leverage. Over the last two years, this has shaped how I see venture not as a role, but as a craft built through proximity, repetition, and continuous learning.
What I Am Excited About Today
Over the past 24 months, I have focused on cybersecurity and enterprise software in vertical AI-led sectors, particularly AEC and healthcare. I am excited by companies building deep, embedded systems that sit close to core workflows and deliver strong outcomes through process-level understanding.
If you are building in any of these areas, feel free to DM or write to us at pitch@kalaari.com or srivastava@kalaari.com.
